


it's just a spark, but it's enough

by tevinterimperium



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s01e09 Left Behind, F/F, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Jealousy, Mild Smut, mentioned Carter/Kendra, mentioned Ray/Kendra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6792091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tevinterimperium/pseuds/tevinterimperium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>and when it's dark out, no one's around, it keeps me going.</em><br/> <br/>Sara is always running, running, running. But sometimes, she's dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's just a spark, but it's enough

**Author's Note:**

> i was listening to Last Hope by Paramore, and that's where the title is from!

The Waverider flies away in the year 1958, and Sara does not flinch. 

Maybe she wonders why they have abandoned them, why they have abandoned _her,_ why they have abandoned their pretty boy scout and their powerful hawk goddess and their resident reincarnated assassin, but she spends all of ten minutes dwelling on it.Ray is insufferable and she feels like she’s suffocating.It’s cold in the charming city of Pleasantville and she only has two sets of clothing for this quick trip down into the distant past and the Waverider is gone, gone, gone.

Ray stares at the empty place where their ship once sat.It isn’t coming back.

Sara says that they should keep moving because she knows what happens if you don’t.Ray and his troop bullshit are shoved aside for Sara’s firsthand knowledge of things, things like _this,_ because the worst Ray has seen must be a beehive next to his picturesque campsite in a domestic forest that his little troop would adventure to.Kendra agrees with her, says that “League wisdom trumps the Eagle Scouts here,” and Sara has never been more grateful in her entire life.

Ray gives up.Not on the concept that they’re getting saved, because that one lives on for a few more months; instead, he shuts his mouth and the team (or the remnant of a team) hot-wires a car.Sara expects some moral garbage about how they shouldn’t be messing with things like this.He does say that they’re the delinquents now, but Sara’s been one of those for a long time.

There is the question of how the team is going to find them, but Sara does not that think that the team is going to find them, period.She pulls out the Savage card, says that he could be coming to kill them. It might be a bit unnecessary, but it gets Kendra on her side. 

(Not that there are sides.Sara isn’t that childish, and she doesn’t care about what Ray thinks.When Kendra sits shotgun and Ray sits in the back, though, Sara thinks of it as a blessing.They don’t speak for the car ride and maybe it’s fine.)

 

* * *

 

 

They get an apartment, and then furniture, and then some semblance of daily life is renewed.But it really isn’t, because the year is 1958 and Sara got herself into a time traveling mission where she was left behind and now everything is ruined.Her father must think that she’s dead, and her sister is probably mad that she lost her only sibling _again._ Oliver Queen lost two friends in one fell swoop and she knows that he doesn’t deserve something like that.She had things to say to him and the team and everyone that is gone.She supposes that it’s far too late for that.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t _pretend_ that everything is fine.

Kendra cooks dinner and Sara hovers around, picking up chopped tomatoes with two fingers.Kendra smiles at her and scolds, but there’s no malice; there never is with Kendra.Ray is tinkering with something in the other room and Kendra and Sara are dancing around each other in the kitchen.Elvis plays on the radio and Sara uses a spoon as her microphone while Kendra grins to herself and makes sure that the chicken doesn’t burn.

The thing about Ray Palmer is that he lives a life of privilege, and he always will.He’s straight and white and a _man,_ above all, and he’s tall and masculine and he’s driven as hell.Ray Palmer is from the corporate world of Star City, and he lives among the sharp buildings and the black suits of the very same people Oliver used to kill for being corrupt, because corrupt and corporate are just a step away from each other; Sara is from the underground world of Star City, and she sees abandoned stores and forgotten citizens dying in the Glades because no one cares enough to save them.Ray is gorgeous and a genius but he won’t ever understand being oppressed and shunned aside in the year 1958 because he’s never dealt with that before.

Sara doesn’t know how Kendra deals with him, much less dates him.He applies for jobs and reads the paper like some overwhelmingly domestic family man and Sara can’t stand it for a minute.She knows that he wants to settle into this, but she doesn’t think that Kendra feels the same.Kendra encourages him as he works on his fruitless machine that won’t help at all and Sara slouches in the other room, trying to distract herself.It works, sometimes.They don’t get a television until Ray gets a job, but the days still fade together.She’s drifted through weeks before but this is even worse.

Maybe Ray is playing out some weird fantasy born from his affection-starved adulthood where he lost not one, but two of his serious girlfriends (one to Slade Wilson and another to Oliver Queen and his charming smirk and dashing wit).Sara would spend more time psychoanalyzing him if she wasn’t busy trying to ignore him.He irritates her in a way that she doesn’t like.It has to do with that pretty smile and his almost childish focus on technology and getting the team back together.She plays along, sometimes. _Only_ sometimes.

Ray is allowed to be an optimist because he hasn’t faced worst-case scenarios.If Ray Palmer, with his one-hundred merit badges and his idiotic grin, had been trapped on the island, she hopes that he would be a pessimist, too.He’s _allowed_ to be an optimist because hope is something that he is permitted, but Sara can’t have that anymore.She hates him and the way he thinks the team is going to save them.She knows they won’t.

Everything feels like a blur.They don’t have cell phones and they don’t have things to do and Sara knows that she sounds vapid but god, does she miss modern television and makeup and a sense of purpose.She knows that 2016 wasn’t the best time period but it was hers and she could do _something._ Ray is the only one who can actually exist in society meaningfully, and Kendra sends him off in the mornings with a peck on the cheek.Sara pretends to still be asleep on the couch.

 

* * *

 

 

The winter shifts into spring and flowers bloom and Ray and Kendra pretend that this is normal.Ray thinks that it is; Kendra knows that it isn’t.He picks her a flower and she wears it in her hair, tucked behind her ear.Sara’s heart might stop beating when she sees it, but no one notices.Her gaze drops to the grass and she keeps on walking ahead, pretending that she didn’t see a thing.

 

* * *

 

 

One evening when the humidity feels heavy and the sun sets late, Ray is out.Sara doesn’t know why; she doesn’t care.Kendra makes dinner for two and they sit across from each other in the living room, and Sara’s elbows rest on her knees while Kendra crosses her legs on the couch.Kendra drinks water and Sara drinks coffee and the silence between them doesn’t feel deafening.Sara sometimes looks up at Kendra when she isn’t paying attention, and if Sara smiles, Kendra doesn’t see it.

Maybe Sara gets drunk with the night and the stars and the lack of light pollution that makes everything seem perfectly crystal clear.She drinks it up, tilts her head back and chugs it down like hard tequila and becomes loose, bold, excited.She swallows stars and becomes the girl she was before her team abandoned her in the 1950s.She plays the radio and she doesn’t know who’s singing, but she pulls Kendra up and they dance.Her eyes softly twinkle in the artificial light of their shoddy apartment, and Kendra takes off her high heeled shoes and drops them wherever, because she doesn’t need them.

(Sara almost trips.Kendra laughs and grips tighter onto Sara’s shoulders.They might be waltzing but it’s not the right music.Or maybe it is the right music; Sara sways her hips and Kendra smiles, and giggles, and follows.)

Now would be the time to ask some thought provoking question about the secrets of the universe, or about their fate, or about their humanity.Sara thinks she might ask if they’re ever going to get saved, or if they’re ever going to get out of here, or if they’re ever going to feel normal.She doesn’t, though. 

Kendra pauses their swaying to pull her hair into a bun and a loose strand doesn’t make it in and Sara desperately wants to push it behind her ear like the flower from the start of spring.Ray got the honor of pinning the daisy in her hair and Sara would do anything to get that, too.The boldness that courses through her veins because of the midnight moon makes her freeze, but Sara still feels warm.She feels like she can dance for hours on end.

Her cheeks are flushed the same way they were when she sparred with Kendra, but the situation feels so infinitely different.Sara has the upper ground in battle because she has trained in Nanda Parbat for a reason and she did not die for nothing, but here and now she is floundering even though Kendra isn’t looking at her. 

Sara’s mouth is open and her eyes are glazed and Kendra looks like a goddess as she bites her lip and lets her eyes meet Sara’s again.Maybe she _is_ a goddess.Maybe the same Egyptian gods that saved her soul the day she died also granted her with the heavenliness of Hathor and the beauty of Isis.Sara thanks them either way.

She does not say anything, because she _cannot_ say anything.The atmosphere feels like glass and she cannot be the one to break it, not now.Normally she is the person to shatter the mirror and tear down the wall but this feels too precious, too holy. 

Despite herself, despite her nervousness, despite the ringing in her ears, Sara moves up, moves in, one step and then two.She can see the creases of Kendra’s face and the way her lips are slightly parted and the soft expression in her eyes It’s the moment of breath-holding right before the kiss, before the music swells, before the puzzle pieces fall together. 

Sara is not one to pause, but here she is.She hovers there with their noses almost touching and their breaths almost intertwining and their lips almost meeting.The moment is so astoundingly flawed and the world definitely doesn’t pause, or slow, or stop.They are breathing and blinking and Sara wants to kiss a beautiful girl with a soulmate and a boyfriend and thousands of years of reincarnations behind her, but that doesn’t make her want to stop.

Kendra is the one who ducks her head half an inch and moves in, her eyes fluttering shut and the gentlest of sighs escaping her, and Sara is caught between gasping and not breathing at all.There is not the sound of fireworks but Sara is still overcome by the sensation of Kendra’s body so close and her lips - which are soft, soft, soft, coated in chapstick and perfect for kissing - pressed against Sara’s.It’s not until Sara shifts so her hands are on Kendra’s hips that Kendra realizes the realness, the tangibility of it.She moves her lower body back but keeps their divine connection right at the lips.

Sara makes the faintest of noises in the back her throat and it comes out needier than she would’ve wanted.Kendra pulls back entirely this time and Sara must’ve ruined the spell because now Kendra is looking at her, eyes wide, more undecipherable than she’s ever been.Maybe she is remembering hundreds of lifetimes of first kisses with Carter, or Khufu, or whatever and whoever he was in that life.Maybe she misses him.Sara’s sure that she would.

She thinks about saying something and asking her if this is okay, if _she_ is okay, if Sara’s very presence in this claustrophobic apartment is okay, but speaking might break the magic of midnight.They are doing unspeakable acts at an unspeakable hour before the sun quite rises, because before then, everything can be kept silent and forgotten.Time is meaningless and endless and that is the beauty of a 1 a.m. in a forgotten year in the past; everything and everyone and especially Sara Lance can be disregarded and unrecognized and ignored in the constant whirl.

Kendra smiles at her and god, does Sara melt.

They return to the waltzing position (which is not about waltzing at all), Sara’s hands on Kendra’s hips and then Kendra’s hands sliding onto Sara’s shoulders; she is tentative but not terrified.Instead of dancing, they close their eyes and kiss and Kendra hums through her nose, quietly, the smile almost interrupting their contact.It doesn’t, though; Kendra would never let such a thing occur.

Sara doesn’t know if this is sinful or sacred because while Kendra is a goddess with the blood of deities running through her veins, they are also in the year 1958 and everything hasn’t fallen into place yet; Lindsay Carlisle is left behind in Pleasantville to figure things out on her own and Sara’s stomach stirs momentarily.They are two women kissing behind closed doors, there always _are_ two women kissing behind closed doors, and maybe they are doing something more, but the world will never know.

Sara shifts so they are on the couch and so she is between Kendra’s legs, and her hands slide up until they are tucked right beneath the spot where her knees bend.Kendra wraps her legs around Sara as the skirt rides up and maybe Sara’s heart flutters, but she doesn’t say anything.They might stop to breathe and press their foreheads together, as a soft moment amongst the noise. 

Their eyes don’t quite meet but they’re close to it; Sara blinks more than she should and she is flushed pink.She knows that she is supposed to be the confident seductress, but the heavy air between them is overwhelming and a hot, tight feeling in her chest makes everything constrict.She slips her hand behind Kendra’s ear and cups her cheek; there is a moment where their eyes perfectly meet and Kendra blinks at her. 

She looks more innocent than she should and Sara wonders how someone who has seen so much can look so purely unassuming.She has seen battlefields of empires lost and she has gone through revolutions that history has not recorded; Kendra may as well be the center of the universe with everything shifting around her.Kendra and Carter, Chay-ara and Khufu, constants. 

It’s daunting, really: being the person that a woman leaves her soulmate for.Not that this is _leaving_ , because Carter Hall is dead and buried and maybe Kendra deserves better than to mourn until he returns as a reincarnated version of the very prince that died beside his priestess thousands of years ago. 

(Not that Sara is the first, either.Ray Palmer is out doing something and Sara prays to God, if there is one, that it stays that way.) 

They kiss and maybe they are doing what they should not be doing.It is hushed and secretive and no one will ever know other than themselves.That’s just the way they like it.

Sara gets handfuls of skin and she doesn’t whisper any secrets into it, because she knows that she is not a romantic.Kendra has a golden sprinkling of freckles all across her scrunched up nose and cheeks and Sara would kiss them if she were someone else, but she is not, and she cannot be that person for Kendra here and now.

(She thinks that maybe Ray is, but she doesn’t think about Ray.He is misguided and innocent and he is still a fish out of water despite his theoretical influence and power.It’s a physics equation and she’s sure that Ray would be able to run it.Calculate sources of error and the percent difference from the experimental yield and the hypothetical yield, cite two sources, explain the procedure and the methods; Sara thinks, belatedly, that Ray and his merit badges would _eat it up_.)

Because Sara Lance is whimsical once the stars are out, she kisses the insides of Kendra’s thighs and, once, her stomach.Kendra reacts beautifully, arching her back and fluttering her eyes and sighing, as though Sara is liberating her from some unknown pressure.Sara’s fingers creep too high for a magical second and then there is Kendra, giggling, complaining about how cold Sara’s hands are through laughter, and she is _ticklish_ and Sara might be transcending this universe. 

Sara doesn’t leave marks; an unspoken agreement.An unspoken everything.Kendra closes her eyes and tangles her fingers into Sara’s hair and it’s heaven when she tugs her up so she can kiss Sara sloppily on the mouth. 

Kendra comes with Sara’s name on her lips after an unidentifiable and unknowable amount of time and Sara, sweaty and smiling and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, is seized with fondness.Kendra’s hair is sticking to her forehead and her hands are grabbing at the sides of the couch for dear life and she should be looking guilty, but she doesn’t. 

(Sara might use the word “heavenly”, or “angelic”, or “celestial”, if anything.She doesn’t tell Kendra this.)

 

* * *

 

 

They might do this again.They might fall into each other on the evenings when Ray’s out, with night classes or meetings or sessions for his increasing position within the world of academia, and they pretend he doesn’t exist.They’ll forget about their liaisons in the morning.

(Sara’s secret is that she doesn’t forget them at all, and that she daydreams of drawing shapes into Kendra’s skin and kissing her in the streets of some unnamed city.She doesn’t know the details of it all, but she knows that there is her and Kendra and they are both where they belong.)

(Kendra’s secret is that she doesn’t want to forget them at all, and that she thinks about kissing Sara Lance even when she’s with Ray and even when Sara isn’t there.She doesn’t tell anyone because she doesn’t know what she’d say.)

 

* * *

 

 

Things change.Things grow.Things shift slightly to the left. 

Sara Lance, the deadly assassin from the future, leaves.

One minute Sara is there, leaned in across from Kendra, smiling at little jokes and moving pieces around the board.The next, Sara is in Ray’s face and she is scrunching her eyebrows and she is grabbing her bag from the back of the room and then she is _going, going, gone._

Maybe Kendra isn’t surprised, because it makes sense: the more time they spend in the 1950s, the less patience Sara has for Ray and his incessant desire to have hope. 

(Maybe she is surprised, because maybe she thought Sara would have stayed with _her_ for _her._ Maybe Kendra is let down.If she is, she doesn’t show it.)

Sara tells her and Ray that they have something special in the twisted reality of the distant past and that they should cling onto each other with everything they’ve got, because that’s hard to come by.

It stings, but it’s hard to explain why.

Kendra doesn’t know if she leaves because she feels unwelcome, or if it’s because of Ray, or if it’s because of Kendra; she thinks that it might be some deadly concoction of the three.Sara is hurt and tired and useless in this decade and she cannot be who she wants to be.Their team is dead and their families think that _they’re_ dead and everything is dizzying, tiring, endless.

Kendra contemplates chasing after her, but she doesn’t.She says Sara’s name passionately, earnestly, begging Sara to return and live in the ignorant bliss for a little while longer, but she doesn’t move an inch.The door shuts behind Sara and then she is left in silence with Ray behind her and the room that feels too large and too small all at once. 

The Monopoly game is left abandoned on the coffee table. 

_Going, going, gone._

_  
_

* * *

 

_  
_

Kendra will save her later in Nanda Parbat, two years later, fingers grasping desperately at Sara’s shoulders, telling her that _it’s me,_ and that _you’re not a murderer or an assassin,_ and if that’s the closest thing to a love confession that Sara gets, well, she’s okay with it.Beggars can’t be choosers and even if Sara knows that Kendra is going to stay with Ray until she is ripped harshly from this reality, it counts for something. It has to.

The weeks fly by as they always do and then they are themselves again aboard the Waverider. Sara does not know if their paramours were simply a product of their distanced identity by being in the past, but she does know that it was worth it.

They don’t fall into each other’s arms again but they remain with their legs brushing as their horses guide them through the desert landscape, or with their faces too close as they spar and discuss the ins and outs of what seems to be normal life upon a time-traveling ship from 2166. 

Kendra looks at her, and Sara smiles. That might be all she needs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i know that ray palmer isn't straight. i know. he just doesn't know that yet. neither does sara. all in due time.
> 
> also: i apologize if this was way too fake deep / angsty!


End file.
